Actualizing the Ideal of Functioning Citizenship

Abstract

Guided by the limitations of traditional citizenship, Chapter 9 seeks to move the ideal of functioning citizenship from theory to practice. After we reevaluate how we see the problem, we must then adjust our responses it. This chapter first offers “practical” recommendations for filling protection gaps and alleviating some immediate causes of human suffering. These recommendations include legal, bureaucratic, and policy responses to hierarchies of personhood. While these steps are useful starting points, they are not (and will never be) enough. Instead, actualizing the ideal of functioning citizenship further requires expanding our notion of citizenship to include political space for those who cannot be neatly categorized as citizens or noncitizens. By acknowledging the limitations of our current system—and recognizing the existence of hierarchies of personhood—we can begin the difficult work of broadening political membership and de-linking worthiness from legal status and state recognition.